Davis — how to stop from drowning

San Antonians and Olympian swimmers Josh Davis (left) and Jimmy Feigen pose for a picture together as the 2016 U.S. Olympic Swimming Team holds practice at Northside Natatorium on Saturday, July 16, 2016. The entire team including Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Katie Ledecky, Missy Franklin and local San Antonian Jimmy Feigen thrilled the crowd as they practiced and swam laps. The team is in final preparation for the upcoming Rio 2016 Olympic Games. (Kin Man Hui/San Antonio Express-News)

Photo: Kin Man Hui, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

“I’m on a plane to Amsterdam right now,” Jimmy Feigen wrote four years ago in a diary for the Express-News, “and my Olympic experience is over.”

He followed with this anecdote: He had accidentally left his wallet in London.

Those were the days. He was free then to leave a country without making restitution, and he was free to joke about his wallet.

Everything was fun then for Feigen, and everything was in front of him. He was the youngest U.S. men’s swimmer in the non-distance races in those Olympics, and most thought Rio, not London, would be his finest moment.

So where does Feigen go from here?

Josh Davis has a few ideas.

Davis doesn’t have all the answers, and he also doesn’t speak from higher ground. “I myself need a lot of grace,” he said Saturday, “and I’m quick to give it.”

Still, Davis followed closely the news of the past week, and he can only imagine what Feigen is feeling now.

“Incredible remorse,” Davis said.

One regret might be following Ryan Lochte. As a Brazilian police officer told the Washington Post, Feigen initially lied to protect Lochte.

“For these three swimmers, Ryan is a reference, an icon,” the officer told the Post. “If Ryan says jump off the bridge, they are going to jump.”

Maybe this dynamic goes back to the 2012 Olympics, too. Feigen also wrote in the diary that Lochte spent “all sorts of cash to make sure everyone had a good time” after the swim competition was over. Feigen also mentioned the hangover that followed the good time.

Still, no matter the details, or what might have been lost in either translation or the cloud of alcohol, this mess was as immature as it was avoidable. And Feigen is tied to it. He has paid the most financially among the four swimmers, and he will continue to pay. For everything he’s done, for all of his accomplishments, does Feigen feel today as if he will be best known for a silly night at a Brazilian gas station?

The 1996 Olympics gave Davis the opposite bounce. He led off the 800-meter relay in Atlanta with a career-best leg, and he slept that night with the gold medal around his neck. He awoke the next morning to a new world.

“My life was forever changed,” he said earlier this summer, because now he had a platform. “To teach swimming, to inspire kids to commit, and to stay pure in mind, body and spirit.”

When Davis wasn’t making appearances, he was starting the Swim4 Foundation, a nonprofit. And when he returned to his old high school, Churchill, he found another swimmer with Olympic ability.

Feigen not only grew up in Davis’ neighborhood, he also followed Davis to the University of Texas. Feigen went on to break some of Davis’ records in the natatorium named after Davis, and along the way they developed a mentor-student relationship.

So Saturday, when asked how Feigen needs to react now, Davis returned to his role with a suggestion. “With honesty and humility,” he said.

Davis doesn’t dismiss what he calls “a couple of bad minutes” in Feigen’s life. But he also thinks Feigen can get past this, and he named someone who has. Michael Phelps, once Davis’ Olympic teammate, has overcome missteps and his own lack of maturity.

“Everybody’s journey is different,” Davis said. “I made big mistakes when I was 17, 18 years old. By the time I was 22 I was married. At 32, I had five kids and two jobs.”

Lochte is 32 now.

“On my last night in London, we went to an exclusive event at Planet Hollywood,” Feigen wrote four years ago. “We had to use the side entrance, and when they announced us to the media, flashes went off everywhere on the red carpet. It was total star treatment.”

Maybe Feigen’s sense of fame has changed. After all, flashes were going off everywhere in Brazil, too, albeit for tabloid photos.

Feigen will never again be the innocent. “But I have seen his heart, the way he works with kids, and the way he has wanted to be a good ambassador,” Davis said of Feigen. “This will stick with him a little while, but it won’t ultimately define him.”

It won’t if Feigen continues to do what he did years ago in San Antonio — which is follow Davis.